Each week, KALX receives dozens of new releases to be added to the Features bin in our legendary library. Including CDs, 7”, and LPs, we have anywhere between 500-700 pieces of music from local to international bands in this small section. Every piece of music in the feature bin is new music, meaning it’s the first place our DJs go to discover the next big thing. The music is constantly changing, and every time you take a visit to the bin, there is something fresh waiting. This is a review of just one of our amazing records currently in our feature bin.
These days Asheville, North Carolina seems like the center of the indie universe, where artists like MJ Lenderman, Indigo DeSouza and, of course, Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman grew up and cut their teeth. Hometown roots are not something that Hartzman takes lightly. In “Formula One,” off their previous release Rat Saw God, Hartzman references locally famous freeway overpass in Durham, known for toppling many a truck with its low clearance: “Truck was too tall for the overpass / Got its top ripped off, didn’t see it happen / I just saw the aftermath.”
Released in the wake of an announcement that Lenderman (who played in the band on top of his solo career) and Hartzman were breaking up after 6 years, Bleeds feels like the aftermath of loss and destruction and being left to pick up the pieces. The second track on the album (“Townies”) almost feels like a follow up to Rat Saw God’s “Chosen to Deserve”, in which Hartzman lists off her many reckless youthful forays into law breaking and substance dependency. On “Townies,” we hear about the fallout, as she catches up with the friends still living a life she mostly left behind: “You sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about it cuz you died.” Hartzman’s wail as she sings “dies” always sends a shiver down my spine. Her stories are haunting because you can tell they happened.
Even the title of the album conveys the feeling of destructive fallout. On the first track, Hartzman sings about a reality TV argument which bleeds through the floor in her house: the violence and anger seeps into everything it touches. Perhaps this explains the album’s obsession with death and destruction. On “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),” we hear the story of a football player who drowns in a creek and on “Carolina Murder Suice,” well, you can guess what that one’s about. Hartzman is unrelentingly committed to looking straight at the violence of life and in seeing the violence in everything. On “Wound Up Here,” she delivers my favorite couplet of 2025: “Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail / Other killers keep teeth, keep the finger nails.”
Her fragmented lyrical style reads like a collection of images she is dying to bring us. It almost feels as if Hartzman is the one who has, as she sings on “Candy Breath,” “opened up a portal / into your sicko world.” In the world of Bleeds, you might be haunted by dead friends, failed relationships, or even the psychological hang ups. On “Candy Breath” she is “surrounded by my sh-sh-sh-sh-shame.” She stutters on the word, as if to shush herself so as to not say it. But in the end, the impulse to confess, to reveal something true, breaks through.
Even love songs turn to heartbreak on Bleeds. In an interview with Clash, Hartzman revealed that her love songs written for Lenderman before their break up were recorded after the split: “So, with songs like ‘The Way Love Goes’ and ‘Elderberry Wine’, I was singing love songs for Jake after having broken up with him.” Perhaps that explains the haunting nature of “The Way Love Goes.” The most quiet and perhaps classically country of the album, despite some of the essential Hartzman flourishes of the song, it almost feels like a timeless piece of music. Other moments of the album reach for more hardcore references. On “Pick Up That Knife,” Wednesday’s classic screeching guitars break into a heavier sound, and threaten to spill over into metal. “Wasp” is Hartzman at her peak punk– screaming loud and fast in her unique style. When I saw them in concert, the song was so electric I thought I might break an arm in the mosh pit. “Phish Pepsi,” a rerecording of a song of off a 2021 Wednesday/MJ Lenderman duo album Guttering is sped up and given a more umpa-umpa twang sound (truthfully I prefer the original, although this version is still quite good).
Wednesday employs all their influences (country, hardcore, shoegaze, the list continues) and of course their trusty pedal steel to make an album that is impossible to knock off. Lenderman’s guitar lines are unmistakable, as are the pedal stylings of Xandy Chelmis. But in the end, it is Hartzman’s unflinching lyrics that stay with me long after I’ve turned the album off. Like Rat Saw God, the album delivers on a brutally real portrayal of substance abuse, broken relationships, and life in forgotten parts of the country. What differentiates Bleeds is its focus on the remains of what is left behind after the crash, after the breakup, after death. It’s the perfect picture of the way things can feel when nothing has gone your way in a long, long time. Hartzman sums up life lately perfectly when she sings “The sweetest things in life keep getting bitter everyday.” Sometimes, the only bright side to dark times is having an album as good as this one to get you through it all.
Review by Mia Call
